Alexander Proud thinks you should sack your life coach

I guess I should be used to the ubiquity of the ‘coach’ in modern life.

At the outdoor gyms in parks around London you see perfectly normal looking men happily subjecting themselves to extreme verbal abuse like privates in Full Metal Jacket. This is the hunting ground of the personal trainer, all the Joe Wicks wannabes yelling instructions, interspersed with generic motivational phrases: “Faster, Harder, Stronger” alternating with: “Come on, man you can do it!” even when self-evidently they really can’t, but they’re paying for that yelling, so the coaches don’t hold back.

It’s not just fitness, says Alex Proud. People have career coaches or executive coaches. There are wellness coaches. Financial Coaches. Relationship coaches. And kids of friends now have homework coaches. If you belong to Britain’s moderately wealthy and ambitious classes, you can justify a coach for pretty much anything.

What about Alex Proud’s PT?

Alex Proud admits that he has used a personal trainer but it didn’t prove to be a lasting relationship.

Alex Proud explains: “I’m very busy and as a business owner I don’t have a regular or predictable schedule so I kept cancelling at the last minute due to meetings over-running, or daily crises at work, so in the end we called it off (it wasn’t him it was me). Perhaps I actually need a time management coach.”

Alex Proud goes on to say that he discovered that he didn’t actually need a personal trainer, but the experience motivated him to do what he could for himself. “I started walking everywhere, across London, weekend hikes, daily miles that saw the weight fall off me. I realised that it was about moving more and eating less, or eating better, cutting down on booze. The boring, obvious basics” Alex Proud notes that “If you’re an athlete, or if you have a real health problem or severe dietary restrictions, then I can see why a fitness coach and a nutritionist will be important, but for a normal slightly overweight, slightly too sedentary middle aged man, you just need to put down the chocolate bar and do something active; get off the sofa and walk a mile a day and I promise you, you’ll thank yourself for the effort, and furthermore the feeling of achievement will be so much greater if you do it all yourself. Really, I should be a motivational coach, laughs Alex Proud.”

Is there an ulterior motive?

Alex Proud says that he doesn’t begrudge his high-functioning friends or their stress management coaches, or their financial advisors or their lifestyle gurus, but he does question the real motive and the real value.

“Let’s be honest” says Alex Proud, “Generally the people who have coaches are relatively wealthy and are seeking help for middle class problems, by paying to have a middle-class status symbol. Do they really need the dog behavioral coach, the movement coach or the relationship coach? Or is it just something to show off about at dinner parties?” Is it that people revel in saying they are: ‘so stressed and so busy and my life is so especially complicated, that only a coach can sort me out.’

What about personal accountability?

Alex Proud also wonders whether we aren’t infantilizing ourselves by handing over all accountability to a teacher. “Can’t we figure some of this stuff out ourselves? Isn’t that part of being a grown-up? That you make your own mistakes, and learn from them, that you muddle through and find pride in your hard won personal achievements rather than outsourcing all accountability and always needing someone to hold your hand?”

Alex Proud also cautions that unlike the majority of mental health professionals, coaches are not regulated and their stated qualifications are not uniform and not always easy to verify. Alex Proud isn’t claiming that coaches are all bad, just that it’s a bit: luck of the draw.

There is also a rather sad point here, says Alex Proud, that people choose to, or perhaps have to confide in and listen to a stranger who is billing them by the hour, rather than turn to friends and family, or mentors and colleagues at work. Really says Alex Proud, his single biggest issue with coaches comes down to the fact that, often, you spend the majority of any coaching session discussing your fears, concerns and problems. Isn’t it sad that we don’t invest more time in ensuring that we all have someone in our life that does that for free?